Author Bio

Bob Tise

With over 30 years of experience in PCB design and fabrication (and library development), Bob Tise has worn several hats in the circuit board industry. He has worked as a contractor at several companies, such as InFocus Systems, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Credence Technologies, and Cascade Microtech. Over the years, Bob has occasionally helped develop of high-performance electronics and witnessed the first projected picture on the wall by InFocus.

Currently working on Sunstone Circuits' customer support team, Bob enjoys helping customers to be more successful with their projects. In his off time, he is an avid mountain bike rider and has been a member of the Mount Hood Ski Patrol for almost thirty years. You can also find him tinkering with old cars and trying his hand at woodworking.

Connect the Dots: MakeHarvard 2019: Bigger and Better!

The second annual MakeHarvard engineering makeathon was a huge success. The event brought over 370 top students from around the world to compete for prizes while building engineering prototypes. It was great to see such a diverse representation of different nations, cultures, and languages. The 2019 event was twice as large as last year, making everything seem bigger and better.

The maker movement is essentially a tech-influenced, do-it-yourself community. It was informally created around 15 years ago around Make Magazine—a geeked-out periodical featuring lots of DIY articles for creations, such as VCRs converted into cat feeders and 3D printers. Maker spaces and events have become more and more popular, inspiring startups and manufacturing innovation as well as clogging garages the world over with half-finished robots and potato cannons.

Sunstone Circuits was eager to return as a sponsor and creator of a competition category this year, also serving as both mentors and competition judges. If you were there, you saw us—we were hard to miss in our bright orange vests. As mentors, we were out and about helping students and answering questions.

The student projects had all kinds of design elements, from software on complex platforms and different programming languages to hardware engineering of all kinds. It was truly amazing to see what these teams could do in a short amount of time. The myriad of skills on display ranged from concept design to advanced coding with real-world platforms, such as AWS. Some projects featured mobile apps and websites. Further, we saw real 3D objects designed, printed, and integrated into projects with documentation that would make most corporate projects envious.

The students were full of questions, and we were eager to help. Sometimes, there were questions we didn’t have complete answers for at the ready, but usually, we were able to suggest a place to find the answer. All the students needed was a direction, and they were all over finding the solution. Problem solved.

Sunstone sponsored Make It Matter—a competition focused on innovative prototypes that had significant social, personal, or environmental impacts. Teams had 36 hours to come up with an idea and bring their creation from design to prototype.

To read this entire column, which appeared in the March 2019 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.

2019

Sunstone Circuits was eager to return to MakeHarvard as a sponsor and creator of a competition category this year, also serving as both mentors and competition judges. If you were there, you saw us—we were hard to miss in our bright orange vests. As mentors, we were out and about helping students and answering questions.

When you send your design for manufacturing, your partner does not know what type of device the board will be part of nor the conditions in which it will have to perform. It’s common for harsh environments or exposure to mess up a board’s performance. If you call out materials that will not tolerate the end-product’s operating environment, bad things can happen—such as a smoking board, for example. Be sure your board can tolerate thermal stress or solder joints risk breaking and damaging components.

Is the world ready for the consequences of rapid automation? Will the use of robots displace entire categories of workers? Can artificial intelligence really “think”? How will manufacturing, including PCB manufacturing, be affected by all of these smart robots? These questions actually come from a pamphlet published in 1955: "The Age of Automation: Its Effects on Human Welfare."

Gerber files can reveal design issues ahead of the quote process and ensure your manufacturer has everything needed to produce your boards correctly. After consulting with Engineering Support Specialist Eric Haugen, we explored some best practices for making sure that Gerber files are accurate.

At a recent Sunstone Circuits planning summit, Matt Stevenson, VP of sales and marketing, and I led a wide-ranging discussion about emerging technologies and how they will impact PCB manufacturing. The following is an abridged transcript of this conversation.

Managing split planes? Your CAM tool will not do it for you. We see this almost every day—not exploding PCBs, which pretty rare—but rather problems created by having more than one voltage on a power plane layer. From where we sit, this is one of the more insidious and costly challenges facing PCB designers.

Choosing wisely is critical for PCB quality and performance, but it can be tricky depending on size constraints, functional requirements, and environmental factors. While we sometimes have a general idea about assembly requirements or how the board will be used, there can still be a lot of unanswered questions as we begin the manufacturing process. After all, there’s a big difference between a PCB going into a drone and a PCB that will be part of a submersible drone and needs to be the size of a tennis ball, withstand intense heat or cold, and function forty fathoms below the surface.

The smoke has not even cleared, but they already know what the problem is. It was supposed to be a celebratory moment for the team, plugging in the first board from the initial shipment. Instead, the room is as silent as a morgue. The engineer knows that they put the capacitor in place. However, on closer examination, it is not close enough to the IC pad to make a difference. Everyone turns to the PCB designer. “But I put it right where the schematic said to!” they say. The fix is easily implemented. It takes 15 minutes to produce a new design. Unfortunately, the break room already has an ample supply of coasters, and that’s all this batch of boards can now be used for.

2018

One of the most frustrating mismatches with alternative through-hole parts occurs when the land pattern matches, but the pin size is off. If hole sizes are too tight, pins may not fit through the holes, or if they do go into the holes, they may not solder well. Solder will need to flow through the gap between the pin and the hole barrel. If there is not enough space to allow enough solder mass to flow through the hole, the circuit board will absorb heat from the molten solder and cause the solder to solidify partway up the hole. This is called a cold solder joint and can result in a premature failure of your circuit.

You’ve finally finished your design. All the traces are correct and the IC landings are to the manufacturer’s specifications. A short run of test boards performs perfectly. For best results, you select a reputable domestic board house for production and a quality assembly shop to do the soldering. When the finished boards arrive, everything looks great. You’re in high spirits and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Then the reports start coming in.

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